Author(s): Anais Nin

Fiction

CHILDREN OF THE ALBATROSS is conceived as a series of lyrical descriptions of the experience of Djuna, a former ballet dancer and her circle. A woman of forty with an unexplained fortune, her only friends are associates of the ballet world, men who tend to attract her only by their least mature qualities. The central account of the novel is Djuna's love affair with Paul, a seventeen year-old youth who finally leaves her. On the surface a portrayal of the clash between autumnal and adolescent passions, this is an insightful tale about an older woman who, as the result of an unhappy childhood, rebels against male tyranny and instinctively looks for the child - one in whom 'the arteries of faith have not hardened' - rather than the man in her lovers. Initially set against a backdrop of Montmartre cafe-life, the novel's pattern becomes more blurred, as if the author retreats into an interior world where dream is the only reality.